Scientific Definition
Painful self-evaluation against a social standard.
Plain-English Definition
Painful self-evaluation against a social standard.
Feynman Explanation
Guilt says 'I did bad.' Shame says 'I am bad.'
Core Principle
Painful self-evaluation against a social standard.
Mechanisms
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
Guilt says 'I did bad.' Shame says 'I am bad.'
Examples
- Public dashboards of failure rates suppress experimentation.
- Shame-based management produces compliance and hidden errors.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Critique behavior, not identity. Run blameless post-mortems.
Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Critique behavior, not identity. Run blameless post-mortems.
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Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Vastness that exceeds existing schemas dissolves the self briefly.
Anticipated harm narrows attention and accelerates action.
Positive self-evaluation tied to recognized achievement.
Clear ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.
Asymmetric information attracts the worst counterparties.
We defer to perceived expertise, rank, or uniform.
Negative feedback returns a system toward a target.
Membership in a group is a baseline human need.
Individually rational choices that produce a collectively bad outcome.
We seek tasks where we feel effective and improving.
Competing loyalties that compromise judgment.
Value is judged against whatever sits next to it.